Toggle Mobile

[inquisitor]

It's interesting and new to me that phones are indeed cycling through all the IMSIs. Such trial-and-error method would mean the phone just tries to register with all the IMSIs and the HLR, which in such scenario has to know from which country each subscriber has an IMSI, then decides whether to allow registration or refuse it. It would also mean the registration process will take longer the more IMSIs you have. Is that the reason why toggle SIMs are limited to 9 IMSIs? Can you say for how long your Android phone sticks to each IMSI?

[ErWeeBee]

Searching for a prepaid GSM SIM, especially for use in and between Germany, Netherlands and Switzerland, I discovered this thread and read quite a lot of it. I still have some questions, in particular because Toggle is still developing, apparently.
If I decide to buy a Toggle SIM I'd like to have and keep IMSI in all three countries: D, CH and NL.
1: As far as I've understood it should be possible then to use Data automatically in all three countries after having applied for that once and as long as the card is topped up sufficiently. Or is it still more complicated than that?
2: Are the reasons to prefer the UK SIM over the Dutch one still valid? If I buy the UK one, I have to pay an additional fee for the Dutch IMSI. Would you say that the advantages of the UK SIM outweigh this?
3: I've read about several cases of complications when people cross borders, but that seems to depend on the phone that is used. Am I right, that an iPhone 3G is likely to play well with the Toggle SIM, especially concerning automatical switching over at border crossings?

[inquisitor]

Originally Posted by ErWeeBee

1: As far as I've understood it should be possible then to use Data automatically in all three countries after having applied for that once and as long as the card is topped up sufficiently. Or is it still more complicated than that?

Yes, though the automatic IMSI switching may not work depending on your handset. Also you will probably need to manually configure an access point profile once for each country.

2: Are the reasons to prefer the UK SIM over the Dutch one still valid? If I buy the UK one, I have to pay an additional fee for the Dutch IMSI. Would you say that the advantages of the UK SIM outweigh this?

Yes, although voice rates of the British SIM are ~20% higher due to the same nominal rates being charged in Euro and Pound Sterling respectively, the Dutch connection fee of € 0.09 per call should quickly eat up the 20% difference as statistically mobile calls last less than 2 minutes.

Originally Posted by ronwi

An unrelated question - anyone know a way to top up less that £20?

Yes, there's a guy selling £5 top up codes through Facebook and email:
https://www.facebook.com/ToggleMobileUK
and his email is toggle@hp-vn.com

Although email as a sales channel isn't necessarily inspiring confidence, I have recently successfully tried to purchase two £5 vouchers which I received 15 minutes after my PayPal payment. Also I was able to redeem them by dialing *131*12-digit voucher code#.

[bourbonkiller]

I've sent an email to CS to ask for the availability of austrian numbers on Toggle, since they've recently launched lycamobile.at. Their answer is surprising, do they realy know about the other parts of their company?

BK


"Further to your email, we are sorry to inform you that currently we do not support Local number feature for Austria. We are always trying to add more countries to our local network hence we hope to be able to add Austria in the future.

We are sorry to say that at the moment we are unable to give you exact time frame for local network in Austria. However we have forwarded your comments to our respective department to explore the option with regards to your query and we will ensure that it will be done at the earliest.

If you would like to be informed about our latest news and offers please let us know and we will add you to our mailing list."

[ChrisNeedsToKnow]

Hi bourbonkiller,

in general their left hand doesn´t seem to know what the right hand is doing.

See Belgian numbers (discussed a little earlier in this thread). Toggle actively promised they´d be available "in two weeks" at some stage. That was roughly 3 months ago, and so far: nothing!

I wouldn´t count on what their customer service guys say. I´m not saying it´s the agent´s fault (it´s not), but rather their internal communication seems to be non-existant.

Hence, while actually recommending this product to my friends, I always warn everyone to accept this card "as is", not counting on its reliability and always assuming it could go offline at any time.

It´s a pity, as the underlying idea is really great. But their approach leaves me worried enough not to turn this into my 1-and-only main SIM (unfortunately).

Rgds, Christian

[bourbonkiller]

Hey Christian,

you are right, a wonderful underlying idea with a mediocre operation. To me the card is quite reliable, never had too much of a problem calling out.

I haven't (or better stopped) given out the local numbers of the Toggle Sim to friends and business partners, therefor I do not know how reliable incoming calls are. I've opened a case with CS asking about the possibility of restoring ALL phonenumbers in case a Simcard dies or get lost. The answer has been quite frustrating! They can move all numbers to a new simcard, but not the one, the simcard has been registerred in the network at the last moment before you lost the sim or the simcard died. In my case, I am mostly in the Swiss network and I thought about printing the number on my business cards. But since this number can not be restored on a replacement sim in the event of damage or loss, it simply doesn't make sense. This is just for general knowledge of you guys and have stopped me from using Toggle as my primary SIM. This may change, when austrian numbers gets available, since I live in Austria (close to the swiss border) and would give me the opportunity to restore my swiss toggle number if anything happens to my sim card.

Have you checked lately about Belgian numbers? I've been checking frequently local number availability for the last weeks (for austrian numbers) and there ARE Belgium numbers available within the "my toggle" area. Belgium appears as the last in the drop down list, next to US!

BK

[ChrisNeedsToKnow]

Originally Posted by bourbonkiller

...there ARE Belgium numbers available...

For me Belgium also shows, but I cannot actually obtain a number. All that shows is an error message "Country alias is invalid " - that´s it :/

Also, when logging in, the Belgian flag doesn´t appear next to the advertised countries.

Did anyone manage to actually get a number?

Originally Posted by bourbonkiller

...They can move all numbers to a new simcard, but not the one, the simcard has been registerred in the network at the last moment before you lost the sim or the simcard died...

Ouch! Another reason not to rely on these guys.

I hope someone comes up with the same product, but implemented in a meaningful manner!

[peterdoo]

Originally Posted by inquisitor

It's interesting and new to me that phones are indeed cycling through all the IMSIs. Such trial-and-error method would mean the phone just tries to register with all the IMSIs and the HLR, which in such scenario has to know from which country each subscriber has an IMSI, then decides whether to allow registration or refuse it. Can you say for how long your Android phone sticks to each IMSI?

In a non-toggle country the Android phone first tries the Lyca UK IMSI. After about 30 seconds (all networks refused registration in that time?) it switches to the Vodafone NL roaming IMSI. It then takes about 105 seconds until the phone registers into the preferred Vodafone partner network. It seems to me that the timeout is not fix, but somehow depends on the time the phone needs to try registration in the available networks and receives rejects from them or times out.

I have also noticed once that while a data connection was established on the phone, the balance displayed on the toggle web site seemed to be about 9 £ lower than it should have been. After ending the data connection, the balance has been restored to the correct one lowered only by the amount used for data transferred. It seems that they temporary reserve an amount for few MB of data.

Here are the smallest amounts I have seen being charged for data connections:
Non-toggle-EU (0,67£/MB): 0,0007 £. Charging interval seems to be 1K.
Toggle (0,15£/MB): 0,0146 £. Charging interval seems to be 100K.

[ronwi]

I haven't used my toggle SIM for a while, and I just put it in my phone here in the US in anticipation of a trip.

I received a text with my local US number. I din't think I had a US number active on the account, and when I looked online I saw that the number was registered today. So it appears that under certain circumstances Toggle will automatically provision a number if you register in a country in which Toggle has numbers.

An unrelated question - anyone know a way to top up less that £20?

Correction: I just looked in the SIM Tookit that Toggle puts on the phone. The SIM was manually selected to the US. I think I once had a US number on the SIM a few months ago, and did the manual selection because I was having problems. So, the SIM had the US IMSI manually selected when I turned the phone on, and that must have forced the re-provision of a number (one thing I am certain of is that I haven't used the SIM for months and the web page shows a new US number registered today.)